Monash University Libraries has 6 libraries in Australia and 2 overseas, with 260+ FTE staff, including casuals. They work in partnerships with faculties and other areas of the university. They offer increasingly interactive and engaging resources, services, tools and spaces.

Program was founded on both the unversity’s and the library’s Digital Education strategies, which has a blended learning approach.

The library’s strategy is underpinned by a research approach, which consists of four areas – methods and approaches to development of self, develop staff capability, identifying content and exploration of tools and learning environments.

Capability: training, providing tools and standards, consultation.

The aims of the course were toe develop the knowledge and skills of Library staff to create e-learning tutorials using Adobe Captivate and to create several useful online tutorials (some of which are created by staff).

Course was run in Moodle, using a constructivist learning approach and involved 12 task based activities and 3 workshops, with real life outcomes which matched up to important milestones and was a blended learning course. Most took place online, but also involved face to face.

Mostly doing stuff, but also evaluation. Involved higher order thinking from creation to assessment. Used multiple methods and design experiments for the learning experience, with the emphasis on qualitative feedback and tasks artifacts.

Course was developed using mindmapping, then was storyboarded, from which it was developed.

Course commenced in June 2011 and was designed to run for two months, but ran to 6 months due to work commitments. Three projects were completed.

Evaluation determined that the course was effective as they all produced effective e-learning resources, with minimal technical expertise. Participants gave a good rating, but there were areas to improve, including improving clarity, reduced workload, software practice, negotiating time to complete tasks.

Next steps: consider next and ongoing interactions, improve submission process and documentation, confirm staff development process and time allocation, improve evaluation, increase collaboration, include staged reporting and enhance the staff e-learning development process.

Playing at professional development? – Ellen Forsyth

How much do you play how much do you work.

92% of Australian homes have electronic games devices. 59% play for an about an hour a day. (only 3% for five hours or more).

Ellen joined up to World of Warcraft a few years ago and is now involved in training in the library in that space. The library is in a public space, but the interaction between participants is restricted to the particular guild. Transcripts are saved to a wiki. Ellen has been running these professional development talks in this space for 12 months.

Even though presenters kept presenting and people kept attending, it was still hard to know whether it was working. She went back to the participants to find out how it went.

Speakers are speed typists. Questions from attendees are best as YELLED out. And it is up to the speaker to acknowledge and respond.

Talks have been about using games in the library, reflections on play – pedagogy and World of Warcraft, WOW in schools, how children learn from computer games.

Presenter feedback – thought it was good, but they have to be a fast typist and fast reader. All presenters were game players, but not all had been WOW players, but they adapted well. It was more relaxing and they enjoyed it more. It also involved trust – on the Internet, no-one knows you’re a dog. They found it easier to engage with the attendees.

Results are skewed because it only involved participants. They came from the US and Australia – from ages 20 to 50 and from across library sectors etc. You could participate even if you couldn’t play. They came because they thought it was the right environment in which to learn about this. The cost entry was low, allowing them to tap into international knowledge for the cost of a WOW subscription. Transcripts were useful for picking up on things they missed.

Series of talks is just the start of exploring the use of games into libraries and for players to be involved in professional development in the games environment. Implications for bringing in reluctant potential participants are still being explored.

Michelle McLean

Part-time librarian, full-time wife and mother, who loves working in a public library and playing with virtual services and new technologies.

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Day 3 – Thursday 14th February 2019 Revitalising first nations languages: keeping culture strong in the digital world – Terry Janke Estimate that there are only 20 Indigenous languages being used in every day speech. 90% of languages are endangered and because they are an oral race, there is limits to what is written […]

Day 2 – Wednesday 13th February 2019 Connecting with users and enriching the library experience in the digital age – Carla Hayden (Librarian of Congress) The importance of reading can not be underplayed. In USA history, African Americans who learnt to read were severely punished, as were the people who taught them to read. “Palaces […]

Day 1 – Tuesday 12 February 2019 Genevieve Bell – Wonder in the age of AI: art, creativity and possibility SIRAC, the first computer stored memory, began its life at Sydney, but then most of its life at Melbourne University. It taught an entire generation about computers and it was used to process data about […]

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And here are my notes from Day 2 – not including of course, the presentation that I gave with my manager Daniel Lewis. ————————————————————————————– VALA Conference 2018 – Wednesday 13 February Plenary 3 – Linked Data Liminality – Matt Miller Matt is a Metadata Librarian, programmer/developer, adjutant at a library school, worked in public and […]

Wow, it’s been two years since I posted here. How do I know? My last posts were about VALA 2016. And now I am back with my VALA 2018 notes. I must post here more often. 🙂 Anyway, it was another great conference and it was my honour to be on the program committee to […]

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Building a Framework for Semantic Cultural Heritage Data – Valentine Charles Valentine works with the Europeana Foundation, which is the central portal for cultural heritage in Europe. Europeana has a huge range of items from European countries, including content from and related to Australia. The European Library was the model on which Europeana was based, […]

Always take away great thoughts and ideas from VALA – here’s what I got from Day 1. Librarianship: saving the world one community at a time – Dr R David Lankes Technology advances have made the world a smaller place. Expectmorelibrary.com. Not all is well in the world and librarians have a part to […]

I was fortunate enough to attend the most recent of these annual events, with guest speaker Marianne Broadbent. She was a very thought provoking speaker. Hope you get as much out of my notes as I did from attending the session. Marianne Broadbent – Implementing 21st Leadership at Multiple Levels Good skills to have are […]